[Minnie's Mate]

Obviously, the inhabitants of your earth don't post the profit reports in the Investors Business Daily of major corporations or you would know that Exxon-Mobile posted yet another record quarterly profit...not just for Exxon-Mobile but an all time record profit for any business on your planet earth. That doesn't sound like they are out to do me any favors. While I don't begrudge Exxon-Mobile for making a reasonable profit, and I'm not saying that this was unreasonable for the amount of product sold vs. the amount of product available at any given point (although the OPEC nations did increase production multiple times over the last year or so), but I don't believe that the oil companies are out to do us any favors.

Simple economics as was taught to me in my college days would indicate that the end retailers cannot absorb too great of a price increase on a product with an already slim profit margin (6% IIRC, when the price was a mere $1.59/gallon) on their primary product and stay in business when most of that product is sold by pay-at-the-pump transactions where few of the purchasers of that product actually enter the convenience store to make additional higher margin purchases.

So I'm sure you really did believe what you read in your beloved and trusted IBD, I can't say that I do or that the majority of other folks around these parts would either.